“You will let me make one for you, dearie, won’t you?” she said. “I feel sure it will be a little Christ baby.” She finished with one of Burns’s lyrics; and then told Arthur that it was now his turn, and that she would play for him. He shook his head, pleading that he was out of practice.!

She looked back at the end of the platform. He had not moved. She gave a slight start, for in their letters to one another they had been discussing this very point.

“As friends of Mary Stopperton,” he said, “we meet on neutral ground. But in all matters of moment I expect we are as far asunder as the poles. I stand for the People.” CHAPTER XVII Years afterwards, listening to the overture to Tannhäuser, there came back to her the memory of that night. Ever through the mad Satanic discords she could hear, now faint, now conquering, the Pilgrims’ onward march. So through the jangled discords of the world one heard the Song of Life. Through the dim aeons of man’s savage infancy; through the centuries of bloodshed and of horror; through the dark ages of tyranny and superstition; through wrong, through cruelty, through hate; heedless of doom, heedless of death, still the nightingale’s song: “I love you. I love you. I love you. We will build a nest. We will rear our brood. I love you. I love you. Life shall not die.”